Blue Blood
by Hayerim
Summary: Finding out where you stand and where you're going in life is difficult, even when you know yourself and your own limits... but Aren knows nothing beyond what the orphanage taught her (not much). So when she accidentally destroys a building and gets involved with the Wizarding World, it'll take effort to figure things out! (Canon pairings only)
1. Chapter 1

It had started plainly enough. Aimée Selwyn, née Malfoi was slowly getting used to the Death Eater meetings she was forced to attend, thanks to her husband. Anselme Selwyn, an old pureblood her family had seen fit to promise her to, had been a low ranked death eater during the First Wizarding War, escaping notice most of the time, and he had been looking for a wife. The Malfoi, always eager to secure more 'meaningful' connections, had traded her like a farmer might sell a cow.

She knew her cousin, one Lucius Malfoy, had just managed to free himself from the stain of suspicion with the help of a substantial amount of gold; he had claimed _Imperius_, and with an infant barely learning to walk, he'd painted the perfect picture to sway the heart of the ministry's fools.

Lucius had gotten out of it scot-free, but it was evident it was a farce, and she didn't know how anyone could've bought it. He strutted among the assembly now, a glass of expensive white wine in his hand, an arrogant smirk on his face. One of the playthings of that evening, kneeling at another Death Eater's feet, tried to grab his robes in a gesture of supplication; the man side-stepped her easily with revulsion written plain on his face. They couldn't abduct wizarding folk as easily now, and so they had to make do with Muggles. She imagined Lucius to be thinking something along the lines of "how abject, how very debasing that I must satisfy myself with this". Narcissa was in a corner of the room, holding her head high as all proper pureblood ladies were expected to, but her eyes were downcast, looking mostly at the guests' feet. Aimée felt a surge of sympathy for her, that she squashed as soon as she became aware of it.

Anselme was discussing whatever strategic holding he was considering next with a man, either Lord Crabbe or his peer, Lord Goyle. She couldn't tell them apart yet, as she had only come to the last three meetings; she'd been married to Anselme for only two months.

Those two months had been enough to make her feel suffocated, and she has to live out the rest of her life with this man… She might take an example from Lady Zabini, but not yet. Two months after `being wed might be a bit early, a bit too _obvious,_ to start plotting murder.

She didn't see him at first, lost as she was in her considerations. A young man that had been absent at the previous meetings, looking morose but making the proper efforts that one had to make to fit in with this… assembly. She spotted him no less than five times looking into the depth of his drink in maybe as many minutes, swirling it in the glass as he did so, pensive. He kept a careful distance from the Muggle girls but she couldn't say for sure if it was because they disgusted him, or if they made him feel disgusted with himself, or even if his leanings were of another sort. That hypothesis made sense, she supposed, as he looked like he could be a Black. The youngest, of course, who was known for his notable attraction to men. The oldest son, Sirius Orion Black, was basically useless as far as the rest of the family was concerned.

Regardless, when her husband declared he was going to Nott's estate (when had he gone from Goyle/Crabbe to Nott?) to discuss investments, she took her decision almost without realising it. She waited until she was sure that Anselme had left, and then she subtly wormed herself into the group's conversation. She was looking for a way to get the young man to go with her and was decidedly stumped, until the man started lightly swaying. Looking at the nearby shelves, she was unsurprised; he'd already downed a bottle and a half of whiskey, it seemed. She took that opportunity.

"Dear, you do seem to be all out of sorts. Here, let me help you." He tried to shove her off without much success, and she dragged him with her into one of the more isolated fireplaces that could be found everywhere in a family manor such as that of the Malfoys. Once she was sure she had a firm grasp on him, she took a handful of Floo powder —enough for two— and she enunciated clearly:

"Selwyn Manor!"

—

Aimée did not realise what was happening at first. Childbirth was a trial for all women, no matter their origin. Witches, Muggles, what did it matter when the world got reduced to the pain of birthing a child you hadn't wanted? She was exhausted, a fact of life she'd gotten used to in the past four months. Poisoning of the blood, the Mediwitch had said, and he'd given her some potion to alleviate the symptoms without eliminating the cause (the baby, the cause was the baby, she was sure of it).

Aimée did not realise what was happening at first, but the smear of blue on her breast brought her back to reality so fast it felt like a physical crash. The baby, a little girl, was pale as snow aside from her face which looked slightly purple. Its eyes were closed, but she did not need confirmation; the blue blood seeping from her umbilical cord was such a bright blue that she might call it turquoise if it weren't for the fact that there wasn't a hint of green to it.

A blue-blood.

She hadn't known that the child wasn't her husband's; he had, after all, insisted on the fact that he needed an heir. A Selwyn heir could only be a _pureblood_ heir, one mothered by a woman from a good lineage, which disqualified most of his bastards. She hadn't known, and were it not for the blue that kept staining her skin, she would've been able to pass the fair child as her husbands. Anselme had been a fair child himself and she could've pegged the excessive whiteness of her skin —and she now suspected, her hair— on the strength of her family's blood; but the Selwyn line was not that of latent bearers of the trait, so there was no way the child could've been a blue blood. Impossible, unless of course, Aimée had cheated on him. Which was obviously the case, with that young man she'd met at a Death Eater meeting nine months ago.

She had to make it disappear. '_Get rid of it, get rid of it now before Anselme sees it_' her mind kept screaming at her. '_Kill it off so you can survive_'. She looked at her handmaiden, then at the Midwitch, and then she grabbed the thing by one of its arms and held it out to her handmaiden.

"Drown it," she said, "and do not tell me of where you do it. Just make sure no one can find it."

The young woman, a girl really, looked extremely uncomfortable as she nodded. She took the ch- the thing, wrapped it in a blanket, then dumped it in a bag that was usually meant to carry whatever handmaidens had to carry (Aimée hadn't given much thought to what they _do_ have to carry). She left the room, and Aimée turned her focus on the Midwitch.

"The child was stillborn. I know for a fact that there have been other instances in the Selwyn family, so no one should look too close. We'll tell Anselme that this is what caused the blood-poisoning. Understood?" The older woman nodded. "If anyone ever finds out, I'll know it's you. Remember this. Now go, and wait for Anselme to deliver him the news. I must rest."

The woman bowed quickly and eagerly left the room, no doubt glad to leave Aimée's presence. Midwitches and Midwizards did not choose such a profession out of a desire to see children die, after all.

—

Alice kept looking over her shoulder, afraid of being noticed. Hanging from her shoulder, her bag was heavier than she had expected and she was starting to tire out. She had to go as far as she could without Lady Selwyn suspecting her; there was no way she could just drown a baby or kill it in any other way.

She had taken the Floo from Selwyn Manor to a pub in London, the owner of which she knew well enough; he'd been curious as to why she had to come through in the middle of the night but he hadn't insisted when she'd said that it was for 'a trifle'. Pulling herself out of her thoughts, she looked down at her map again until she located what she was looking for… she was almost there.

The building was drab, and one of the wings appeared to be crumbling. It was all made of grey stone, and she was sure it would look ominous even on a bright, sunny day. Over the front door was an overhanging declaring "Spurgeons Orphanage", but she could see the second S in Spurgeons only because the glue that had held the letter had left a stain when the thing had fallen off.

Shaking herself out of her stupor, Alice pulled the bundled child out of her bag and climbed the three steps leading to the door of the building. There, she left the child with nothing more than a cover, hoping that the lack of identification would protect the child from the Lady's wrath. After a final worried look, she just left.

On a night of early November, on the steps of a decrepit orphanage in the suburbs of London, a baby wailed.

—

Phanes was sitting on her cot, once again having to find something cool to put on her arm to stop the newly-formed bruise to grow too visible. The matron was in a good mood this time: she had stopped herself after back-handing her only once, for trying to smuggle some bread out of the kitchen. Lucy had fallen ill two days before, and could not make it to meals. And that was without even considering risks of contagion which would make the matron throw her out of the room anyway. She still needed the food, though, and Phanes liked the little girl enough to try and help her. A fat lot of good that had done.

Out of ideas, she took the fraying casing of her pillow off and went to the faucet to wet it. She applied it to the darkening, hand-shaped bruise on her hand. It offered a striking (ha!) contrast with her small frame: the mark covered almost all of her upper arm, which was a feat in itself.

All the children in Lambeth orphanage were abnormally small in stature, due to the lacklustre meals they got and the taxing chore they all had to do. Phanes did not fit that average, most notably because she'd been pretty tall already when she had gotten to the orphanage at ten. Well, that and the fact that she was living in a 'boy' body. She'd given up years ago on getting the Matron or most of the 14-18 children's group to use the proper pronouns; but most of the younger ones, the ones she cared for, never referred to her with anything but 'she' or 'her'.

She heard a bell sound and got up to make sure all of the children supposed to leave were ready.

"Mark, your bag is open, you're going to lose your books. Adam, Callie, _stop fighting_. You know the rules. Where is Nichol?" She gave the dorm a sweeping glance. "There you are."

The child, barely four, was sitting on the ground behind Phanes' bed, where Lucy rested; the teen picked him up before lowering him into the group about to leave. Mark immediately grabbed his hand so he couldn't run off. She checked that everyone had everything and then she ushered everyone out of the dorm, then out of the building. "Mark, be careful that Nichol's lace doesn't come undone!" She yelled as she saw the youngest boy tripping not even fifty metres into their trip to school. Mark answered with a wave without even looking back, but he did bend down to check that no lace was trying to wiggle free of the butterfly knot.

Some of the children were allowed to go to school, and subsequently got out of some of the chores, but one grade under the "acceptable threshold" arbitrarily set by the matron meant a beating; another one meant being pulled out of school.

Phanes had been one of those. She gave little importance to that, though, as she cared much more about practical skills that would allow her to keep the little ones safe - never mind that she was only 13-and-something herself. She had become rather adept at managing the kids in her dorm, which fell to her anyway since she was the oldest there; she still had to teach Nichol that eating whatever he found, food or not, was not a good idea, but well. The kid was four, information of this sort didn't stick all that well at that age.

She was interrupted in her musing by the matron calling her and the 15-18 dorm overseer (a 25 years old, lanky man with an obsession for neon shoes) back in. She had them sit at the table, and Phanes was worried this was going to turn sour very quickly.

"We're getting three new children in two days. Two will go with Albin's group," she said while jerking her chin in his direction, "and one to Phanes' group."

"Three at once? That's going to be a mess," protested Albin, "especially if I get two teens! I only just solved the problem with Tina and David!"

"They're children from Spurgeons', the Stockwell orphanage. It got closed because the superintendent cocked up one too many times, and the kids are being allocated to other houses." Well, that explained why Phanes had gotten out of a worse punishment that morning. The Matron simply had better things to think about. "Albin, that's all; you have enough room in your dorm that there should be no issue. Be ready for them in two days." She turned to Phanes when the man had exited the room. "It'll be another issue for you. You'll have to pair up more kids since we don't have the room. And get the Nichol brat to stop peeing his sheet, that'll help."

"Yes, Matron." Phanes hesitated a bit before bringing up what she was thinking about. "Matron, can I please have some bread for Lucy? She can't come to the kitchen without making everyone sick, but she won't heal without foo—"

"No. Since you care so little of the consequence for yourself, this is how this will work. Lucy is getting food when you finally learn how to behave. Is that clear?"

"... Yes, Matron."

She was quickly dismissed after that, with a few more recommendations from the cantankerous woman, and so she made her way back to the dorm. She hadn't gotten much about… Allen? She hoped it wasn't a kid older than she was; her dorm was supposed to have kids up to fifteen years old. A teen or a preteen older than her but still having to defer to her because she had seniority in the dorm might turn... gladiatorial.

Lucy turned around in Phanes' bed and coughed once or twice, a weak and dry, wheezy sound. She brought some more lukewarm water to Lucy to try to quell her thirst, then settled at the foot of her bed to watch over the younger girl, making sure her bruise received as little pressure as possible. She lay there, and sleep was long coming.

—

"Fey! Feyyy! _FEY_!"

"Oomph!" Was all the answer Phanes could give as she fell from her perch on the corner of the bed. It took her a moment to resituate herself.

"Fey, they're here!"

"Wh- oh. Right. Ok." She turned to the prone form in the run-down bed, she shook her. "Lucy. Lucy sweetheart. Wake up."

"Fey?"

"Lucy, I have to go down to pick up the new kid. I'll be back as soon as possible. If something happens, send Sonia to get me and I'll come back."

"Hmmmmm'okay..." she mumbled as she burrowed further into the blankets. Phanes touched her head to check if the fever was gone. It was still frighteningly hot, but she had to go to welcome the new kid.

—

Aren (and not Allen as she had thought) was a six-year-old girl. She looked like she was four, or a scrawny five-years-old instead. She was frighteningly skinny, terribly small and pale as a ghost. She'd arrived a good hour earlier, and during the whole transfer process, she hadn't piped out a word nor lifted her eyes from her shoes. Phanes knew the child was not deaf (or at least not entirely) because she reacted to sounds, but she hoped her muteness was caused more by shyness or the fear caused by a drastic change in environment rather than more of a long-term issue; that would make living here painful, mostly because of the 14-18 group.

Finally, it was over, and Albin left with the two new teens (Tonio, a seventeen years old boy who kept picking his nose, and Sasha, a fifteen years old gender-ambiguous 'child' who kept jumping at every noise and started shaking if one got within a meter of them). Phanes made sure she had the Matron's go-ahead before turning to Aren.

"Come on, Muffin. The boring stuff is over, time to show you the dorm." The child looked up, her expression placid and uninterested. She grabbed the older teen's hand and suddenly Phanes thought she had her fingers stuck in a vice; she winced but didn't say anything. She looked down again to see the little girl sticking to her like she wanted to fuse herself into her leg. Her expression was calm and focussed, but she kept shooting little glances around them.

It reminder Phanes of a little animal who emerged from a cage into a new environment for the first time. Aside from the animal part of the statement, she supposed it was fairly accurate.

They walked out of the 'office' (Phanes thought it was a glorified closet with chairs and a table in it) and made their way down the hall. She was tempted to get some food from the kitchen for Aren, and maybe for Lucy too, but the Matron's word still rang in her head, so she abstained. She'd have to make do by sneaking some of her own food out of the kitchen to give it to Lucy.

One of the younger-ish boys popped his head out through the door to the dorm just as they got there.

"Hey, Fey, who's the midget?"

Phanes did not have the time to answer before the child let go with one of her hands to look at the boy and _flip him the bird_.

"Aren! That is _not_ a proper way to communicate!" She turned to Philip, "that's Aren, our new resident. Has everyone shuffled and switched beds?"

"Yeah, we're good." He turns to Aren. "You better not piss my bed, midget, 'cause you're gonna sleep in there. Seriously, even Nichol would not have worried me this much."

"I haven't wet the bed since before I turned three."

It took a second for Phanes to realise that the child had finally spoken. Her voice was light and soft but unwavering, and there was no emotion at all in it; not even annoyance, as one might have expected for such a sentence. Well, at least she talked, that was one less issue. Maybe she'd thaw a bit after a few days?

"You're four at most, _shrimp_, so I'm not counting on that control."

"Alright, stop," Phanes interrupted, holding her hands up between the two, "there's no need to antagonise anyone here, no one is going to wet the bed; this is just a temporary situation anyway; just until we manage to make some room. Philip, weren't you supposed to be ironing clothes?"

Philip grunted, starting to turn around. "I'm going back. Just had to disinfect my arm, I got myself burnt a bit with the water."

"Did you manage to clean it by yourself?"

"Eh, easily enough. Gotta go, see you later." He paused before smirking. "Bye, Shrimp." Then he simply turned his back to them and left. Aren simply glared, a half-assed expression as if she didn't have the energy to muster more vehemence. Once Philip was out of sight, she simply looked up at Phanes' face, her own back to neutrality.

"Alright, Muffin, let's get you situated." She took the child's hand and they entered the dorms. Well, 'dorm' was a big word. It was really just a room where someone had jammed as many beds as they could, plus a couple of cupboards that were supposed to serve as dressers. That's all they needed anyway, considering that none of them had that many possessions in the first place. "Good, Philip has already taken his things away. Here, that's going to be your bed from now on. Lucy will probably have to share with you… She's using my bed for now, since she's sick and can't share with anyone. She used to share with Nichol, but the Matron frowns anyway when girls bunk with boys." What a load of crap, really.

They spend the next thirty minutes setting up everything so that Aren could sleep comfortably that evening, or as comfortably as she would be able to. There were introductions and explanations —the rules, and some hints about when to avoid the Matron— and banter.

"We try to never fight each other, but sometimes that doesn't work. But a thing we never, _ever_ do is hit each other. We do not punch or slap or kick, because there's enough of that from the Matron when you break the rules."

Aren had silently agreed.

Phanes had shown her the shower (there was only one, so they took turns and showered a day out of two, sometimes three), the bathroom, the workroom… She knew the Matron would not send Aren to school. Too young, too scrawny, and Spurgeons' did not have a good reputation where the education of its wards was concerned; she'd see no point in wasting the resources on such a child.

She was sad but not surprised when she saw Aren take two pairs of tatty pants, a few t-shirts and only enough underthings to last her a week, but nothing more personal, not even a toothbrush. She hadn't actually _looked_ for decay in Aren's teeth, but they hadn't looked that bad; the girl had to be lucky: cavities were extremely painful if one was to believe Sandio —one of the oldest children in the dorm after her and Philip.

—

It didn't take long for Phanes to understand that Aren knew much more than she'd initially guessed. The little girl obviously knew how to read fast enough, though she didn't know if that skill translated to appropriate spelling. She could count fairly well, and do basic calculations as well; addition, multiplication, even Euclidean division. Surprised but enthusiastic, she tested her on other things that she remembered from primary and what little secondary school she'd attended.

Aren was a _disaster_ at anything regarding what the girl called 'the real world'. History, geography, civic rights… She was extremely cynical and considered that anything beyond her immediate perimeter was useless, especially considering how hard navigating what _was_ in her immediate perimeter was already.

That was another thing Phanes could at least partly understand. Aren was bright and had an extremely good grasp of the worst of what humans could be, but she was… to put it bluntly, socially inept. Introspection was alright, and she knew how she worked _herself_ but she didn't seem to understand displays of emotions coming from other people unless it was extremely straightforward. Phanes quickly stopped counting the rhetorical questions she'd asked the child as a joke, only to find herself with a serious, surprisingly in-depth answer.

So instead of teaching Aren the things that she obviously already knew, she tried to teach her the finer points of human communication. How to identify sarcasm. How to tell hurt from actual anger or aggressivity, how to differentiate indifference from disdain. How to get sarcastic herself; that was the one skill Aren took to like a fish took to water. This all had the advantage of both helping Aren fit a bit better in the dorm by not putting her foot in it all the time, and helping her anticipate the Matron's moods, mostly to know when to not ask for things or when to do it, and when to avoid her at all costs.

—

That didn't last. Soon enough, with three new mouths to feed and no other source of income than the children's work and meagre donations, no adoptions and no wards reaching their majority in the near future, the Matron grew a permanent nasty mood. That, in turn, turned into a quickness to anger, and with the help of cheap wine, an increased tendency of beating the children for the slightest mishap.

They had borne with it for a long time (almost a year, Phanes thought) until Nichol had made a simple mistake, or had an incident. She couldn't remember what it had been anymore, but she was sure it had been silly. A little thing, really.

The Matron had not thought as much and had made that clear by stuffing the little boy into a closet and telling him he'd stay there until he'd learned his lesson; and when Sandio, then Phanes had tried to get him out, both had been beaten, thrown out and threatened with an extension of the toddler's punishment. That had kept everyone away. What no one realised was that between the alcohol and what most wards described as 'her natural nastiness', she'd either forgotten or deliberately withdrawn food and water from Nichol.

They'd realised the extent the Matron had taken it to when Phanes snuck out at night when she'd been sure the old woman had been properly knocked off by her usual drink of choice. Upon reaching the back of the pantry where the stocks of the orphanage were kept, she'd smelled it. Rotten meat.

She'd hoped (or rather tried to convince herself) at first that it was a piece of meat that had gone bad. That was unlikely, of course; whatever little meat the orphanage had managed to procure in the past was long since gone and the Matron's new beverage predilection meant the money went elsewhere now.

She made her way to the cupboard to find it still closed with a bar blocking the door, but the smell was hardly mistakable; still, she had to check, so she took off the bar and then pulled the door open… and her first instinct was to twist on the spot to retch anywhere but on the corpse.

She could still recognise Nichol, of course, but he was decidedly _other_ now. The most evident sign was that his cheeks were pale, which had never happened before; they were gaunt but tended to remain rosy. His skin had a weird sort of sheen to it, almost like he had a fever, and the underside of his eyes was discoloured; a greenish sort of purple. His stomach was bloated, to the point where it never had been before, even when Nichol had stuffed himself on the rare occasions it was allowed.

Nichol was dead.

She hadn't even thought about— about anything really. She'd just instinctually closed the door, then put the bar back into place and taken enough food to last a few days, then rushed back to the dorm as silently as she'd been able. She'd woken up Philip, Aren, and Lucy, and they had grabbed bags, shoving all of their things in them, and then made their way out.


	2. Chapter 2

Phanes had been torn about it but had needed to make a choice. She'd known that waking more than two or three children and getting them out would be impossible without waking the Matron or Albin, and so she'd have to come back to get the others. Soon, she'd promised herself. When they had a place for themselves. When they knew how to get food. When—

She shut that train of thought.

They were still running in the streets, trying to find a place to stay. Lucy was gripping her shoulders from her piggy-back position on Phanes' back.

"Where are we going, Fey?" she asked in a barely heard, still half-asleep whisper.

"Away. We can't stay there anymore. The Matron has finally lost it and we're not safe. We'll have to come back for the others once we find a good place."

"Hmmm..." Lucy had stopped being sick about a month after it had started, but despite almost a year later she was still weak and unable to walk on her own for long, much less run. Aren and Philip were running behind her, and she looked back every two or three steps to make sure they were still following. Philip managed just fine, but Aren, who was even smaller than Lucy, had difficulties following; where Phanes took three steps, she had to take twice that.

They reached a large building that looked half-decrepit, with broken windows and no light on the inside. The door appeared to be locked, but she let Lucy climb off her back, then jammed her shoulder into the rusted thing as violently as she could. It gave in easily.

"Come in, now. Quick, we have to close it again." The three children scampered in and she closed the door again. She had to jam it again to shut it properly, but she finally managed it.

The place was not pitch black, but it still took their eyes some time to get used to the surrounding darkness. Apparently, they were not the first to think of using the place as a shelter, because there was a pile of tatty blankets in a corner of the hall that they found themselves in. They went there directly, and the smell was terrible, but still better than freezing in the cold of late November.

Aren took off for a couple of minutes, rummaging about, then came back and in a whisper: "I found water. At a tap."

That was something. They'd have a steady source of water to wash themselves and possibly drink, if they had no better option; unless the pipes froze, but that would be a problem for later.

"Philip, can you give me the backpack now?" The boy wasn't long to comply and gave Phanes the bag packed with some bread, a cold bottle of porridge, some crackers and two empty water bottles. They'd know soon enough is the water was safe for drinking or not. They ate some of the bread but kept most of it just in case they couldn't find anything else the next day; quenched their thirst with iron-tasting but otherwise good enough water; then wrapped themselves in the blankets, and bundled together to keep some of their warmth. Still, in between shivers, with images of a tiny corpse in a cupboard burned into the back of her eyelids, sleep evaded Phanes for a long time.

—

All things considered, it had been relatively easy for the children to settle in. There was the hunger; they were used to it. There was the cold; they were used to it. There was the fear; they were used to it. It was a sad realisation for Phanes to understand that the Matron had prepared them very well indeed to face the harsh reality of _out there_. She wasn't sure if it made things better or worse.

The hardest part had been getting their digestive imunitive systems to adapt to their new 'diet'. The water had been the first not-so-surprising-surprise, causing them to have bouts of diarrhoea for the first couple weeks or so that they spent at the hangar. For all that they didn't have much at the orphanage, clean and warm water had been one of their only luxuries. The second surprise had been a couple months later, when Lucy and Phanes had shared a bit of stolen cheese as a rare treat. They'd found it still wrapped, thrown in a trash bin behind a grocery store, probably for a thing as silly as an expiration date. They all knew that was bull shite by now, and they hadn't hesitated. Aren and Philip, not having any fondness for that particular type of cheese, had shared a fruit they had nabbed from the front of a store. Phanes and Lucy had been sick for three days, and then weak for four more. Phanes had been tormented by flashes of Philip in her fever-induced nightmares and Lucy, already weakened by her sickness, had grown more so even after her system cleared of the spoiled cheese.

There were a lot of street fights. Apparently, the spot they'd found had just been vacated and a number of street dwellers had hoped to make their home there; they were subsequently angry at the orphans for arriving there first. It was rare that they managed to avoid physical fights, and if they did it was thanks to Phanes' posturing. To everyone's surprise, their more effective defender were Philip… and Aren. Phanes was reluctant to harm anyone, and Lucy was too weak to harm even a mosquito. Philip and Aren suffered from neither complications.

The boy, although underfed, had grown a fair bit in the few months they'd lived there, and almost reached Phanes' height now; he was also a rather strategic thinker and was good at identifying the weak links in whatever group was attacking them. He could not hit strongly, but he could hit _well_ and _where it mattered_.

Aren was a savage; there was no other word for it. She was tiny, and relatively weak because of it, but the other three quickly realised that she made that up with loyalty, fierce possessiveness and actual rage. If someone tried to harm anyone in the quatuor, she'd dig fists and nails and actual tooth into the attackers until they went down. Philip still got green and shuddery when he remembered that she'd once torn of an ear that way. It made one wonder what she'd gone through prior to the Lambeth Orphanage to grow this feral.

They mostly lived off begging, stealing in the trashes of stores and pickpocketing. They quickly learned the do's and don't's, mostly through trial and error, but hey. What worked, worked.

Begging was, in and off itself, easy enough. It was mostly a matter of getting that one Good Spot (the church was a very good one, especially after Sunday mass when people felt most chastised) and showcasing something interesting. Phanes and Lucy usually sung duets, simple songs that the older one had been able to learn when she still went to school. With her deep voice and Lucy's bird-like one, it made a charming enough result and they got a good amount of change. When Lucy was too weak to sing, Philip juggled plastic balls, but that never garnered as much; he suspected his black skin had to do with it but never said so in presence of Aren, who went in a right tiff over it.

Aren was the most skilled at pickpocketing, principally because of her small size. She sometimes left two or three days to go closer to London; more precisely, the subway network. She stayed there for a couple days, waiting for periods of affluence when people kept bumping into each other and didn't notice tiny hands going into their pockets and purses. When she got back to the suburbs with the rest of their patched-up family, she sold anything that was not straight up money and this gave them enough to sustain themselves for a while.

They had tried once or twice to distract people closer to their little camp, so that Aren could go around and work without being noticed despite the better visibility.

They'd dropped that after the second time Philip got dragged halfway to the police station. One of the men in the assembly had thought Philip had kidnapped a young white girl (Lucy) to slave her off, if only because he was black. That confirmed his suspicions of racism, and he was only let go when Lucy started crying after Philip.

When all of that wasn't enough, they dug into the trashes behind stores or at the market.

—

The nagger was dead. Aren tried to keep from sobbing, which only resulted in a painful hiccup. Dead. The fact was staring her in the face, and she could not make herself grasp it. Philip was dead. The tiny voice she used in her head when she thought kept repeating the word around and around, like a distorted echo in an icy cave. _Dead. Dead. DeAD. deAd. DEad._

She leaned forward, her hands on her knees, and heaved once, twice through her heavy breathing. Her empty stomach refused to settle. A cough. It was her fault. _Philip!_

She looked around but everything was blurry. She didn't know where she was. Out of reflex, she ran.

—

The day had started well enough. Phanes and Lucy had gotten a good catch at the church, a noble attending the mass apparently, and for once that meant they could go to the grocery store and actually get warm food; a microwave was available for nearby workers to heat their lunch if they bought it in the store. That was one of the reasons they took care to never steal from this particular store, and went farther away when they had to.

Aren and Philip had just been out of the building, each with two slices of reheated quiche to bring back to the rest of the group, and were making their way back to their hideout through a series of narrow backstreets, when it happened.

"Well, you're one pretty boy aren't you," came a voice from around a corner. "Such a pity you're just muddle trash." Muddle? Muddle… messy, confused. Should this feel insulted? "Let me have a bit of fun with you…"

An overly-thin woman, that Aren thought to be in her forties, rounded the corner from which the voice had come; her hair, dark grey and going down to her mid-back, was tangled and frizzy in a way that suggested she hadn't washed it for a while. She had a fleeting thought along the lines of 'how did she see us past the corner?' before the woman grabbed Philip with her left hand and held him, in an impossible grip that belied her wiry frame, against the wall by his tatty shirt. In her other hand was what looked like a crooked wooden stick that she kept lazily waving in front of Philip's face.

"Hmmmm… I've always been fond of carving… I wonder what your flesh would look like underneath?" She uttered a word that Aren did not understand, her gesture turned sharp, and a gash appeared on Philip's cheek that immediately started leaking blood profusely. "Ah, stunning…" and then she leaned to lick the spilling blood off Philip's cheek.

Aren's yelp of fear and disgust brought the woman's focus on her. Her left hand slid from Philip's shirt to his throat and Aren could see a flash of a massive blur of black on her inner left arm. "My, my… another toy. A pity Nott is otherwise occupied; I am convinced he would have greatly enjoyed you. Nevertheless…" She made another grand gesture with her stick, without saying a word this time, and Aren found herself unable to move. "Your turn shall come, little muddle bird. Let me enjoy this one first…"

She turned back to Philip and started carving cuts into him; first his left arm along the length, then another gash on his left cheek, anything she could reach without having to take her hand from the boy's throat. He was starting to kick his feet against the wall, his right hand grabbing the one circling his neck and trying to pry it off. Between choked whimpers every time the woman cut into him, he could only catch a wheezy breath on occasion. He was going to suffocate.

Aren pushed and pushed at her legs and her arms and _anything_ to start moving, and finally she could. She threw herself at the woman, and it was enough to make her let go of Philip but not to topple her to the ground. The boy fell to the ground in a heap, obviously unconscious at this point, either through lack of air or blood loss. She had no time to ponder it.

"_What ?! _Muddle filth, how dare y— Ooooh," she interrupted herself, and the creepiest smile Aren had ever seen bloomed on her face. "Not so muddle after all, are you? We have ourselves a little baby mud-blood! I think… Yes. I shall bring you to Nott and Mulciber; you will make for a wonderful dinner entertainment." She repeated her earlier gesture, but this time nothing happened; the creepy grin was replaced with a frown. She did it once again, with the same result. "How peculiar… I suppose even mud-bloods sometimes have special abilities." The grin came back full-force. "All the more reason to bring you back. You will come with me, willingly or not, child." It was the first word she was actually saying _to_ Aren and not _at_ Aren, and it startled her into answering.

"What?"

"Oh, yes you will, baby mud-blood." The grin seemed, impossibly, to get wider. She walked closer to Aren, "you will, or your friends here will hurt… more." A step closer, and Aren doesn't dare move in fear of Philip getting hurt, but then the woman lay her open hand on her cheek in an almost tender gesture.

The face of Mr. Matthews flashed in front of her eyes, looming over her with a soft smile and gentle hands, and her whole torso suddenly felt like it gave something between a lurch and a squeeze. _No!_ The hand is wrenched from her face at the same time as the rest of the woman was thrown against the narrow street's wall…

Aren jerked immediately out of her stupor, never noticing that the woman was stuck to the wall way above the ground and that something kept _pushing_. She ran to Philip's prone form and shook him once, twice.

"Wake up Philip, please- C'mon, wake up you asshole!" When nothing happened, she slapped him as hard as she could on the cheek that wasn't a damn open wound, and when that didn't work either, she leaned down to feel for air coming out of his mouth; there was none. She immediately yelled.

"_HELP! Somebody help! Please!_" The cashier of the shop they'd been out ran out and to her, just as Aren was starting to actively panic. "Please ma'am, he's not breathing and I can't do anything, please help him—"

That was when her eyes caught the woman against the wall, or rather what she'd become. There was no human shape to be recognised anymore, only ground meat and bone and a weirdly-spared patch of skin where she could see a large skull with a coiled snake for a tongue glaring at her, somehow protected from what had caused the damage to the rest of the body.

With a hiccup and a loud _CRACK_, she was gone.

—

Being all on her own was, logistically speaking, less difficult that one might have expected. Her time with the other children in the streets had taught her all she needed to know to be able to survive, and considering she kept moving (never more than two or three day in one place, though she did come back to some places later on), she was harder to spot because of regular 'activity'.

She had long stopped going to any of her regular spots, in fear that Fey or Lucy would find her there. The most vocal part of her insisted that she couldn't risk them like that: what if she lost control of… that, again? What if she turned them into wall decorations too? But a smaller part of her, more quiet but truthful, kept saying that she was a coward. That she would have to admit to them what had happened, that they would be disgusted with her. Blame her for Philip. Hate her. She could not take the thought of it; she hated herself enough as it was.

In the month or so she'd been away, she'd had about an 'accident' every three or four days, usually when her anxiety spiked again because of staying in one place for too long; that had motivated her strange routine in the beginning. She found a more-or-less safe place to stay, found enough to feed on either by stealing or begging, got water _somewhere_ (square fountains were tested and not experimented with again), and stayed for a couple nights. When the fear came back, she moved. When she was not fast enough, windows broke, walls crumbled; once or twice, she'd woken up surrounded by a circle of dead birds.

She could spot it happening now, a pressure starting in her stomach and making its way up her lungs, her shoulders and arms, behind her eyes. She could stop it, for now, by clamping down every muscle in her torso. This force that had crushed the hag into a wall would not leave, and every time it got worse, to the point where she was afraid she'd one day tear at the seams under its force.

This time, though, she was in an abandoned building. There was no one nearby, thanks to the 'KEEP OUT' signs all around the place. No one would walk in… no one could get between her and the walls. Maybe she could let it out? She sat gingerly on the ground before shifting to a lying position. She closed her eyes; un-clenched her fists, relaxed her arms and unwound them from around her stomach. Just as she was about to rest her arms at her sides, and to stop holding her core so contracted, the _thing_ turned into a vicious pressure trying to get out. Up her chest, her throat, her eyes and it burned until she opened them once more.

She felt it bursting out of her then, pushing everywhere around her until it collided with the ceiling. There was a loud, almost keening sort of creaking sound as cracks formed along the ceiling and grew larger until they reached the walls. Then, a piece of what was probably plaster or concrete detached from the mass of the building above her, but she was out cold before it ever reached her.

—

Her first coherent thought upon waking was that brains were not supposed to try to leak out of one's ears. She had a massive headache that drew lines of burning tensions going from the back of her eyes, to her ears and down her jawline to her throat. She debated whether opening her eyes was that good of an idea, when she remember the abandoned building and its ceiling about to fall on her, and her eyes flew open on their own.

She regretted that for a few seconds, because even in the very dim light of the room she was in, everything looked blinding. It took her a moment of wild blinking, but she managed to clear her vision well enough that she could identify the place she was in. Or try to.

She had definitely moved. There was no debris around her, nor windows of any kind, and by the temperature and dampness alone she supposed she was well underground. (_Do not think of Spurgeon's cellar._) She tried blinking some more, but she still had some sort of double vision; when she closed her eyes one after the other, she realised one of them could now see perfectly fine (or as fine as it usually did, she was mildly convinced she needed glasses) but the other had a strange light pattern etched over everything. It stretched over the walls, dimmer in some places than in others. Looking up, it also covered the ceiling; under her was another yellow net-like thing, that seemed to light up everywhere she came in contact with it. In one of the walls, the nets became so dense she could not see anything underneath and had to close her right eye to erase the pattern; it revealed a barred door without lock or handle.

Opening her right eye again to be able to evaluate distance, she got up to walk to the door and get out. She noticed in passing that the floor kept lighting up wherever she put her foot down. When she reached the door, she tried to grab one of the bars to push but one of the yellow tendrils immediately turned a muddy red and _moved_ to lash at her hand; it burned the back of it and she let go with a tiny yelp, just as an alarm started ringing through the hallway she could see beyond the bars. A man came rushing with a panicked expression, before calming down upon seeing her curled around her hand in a self-protective reflex.

"Oh, it's you. Took your time to wake up. The Crows are almost here, won't take long now."

"Wha- where am I?"

The man crouched in front of her, and she managed to see him better through the bars; the lights in her right eye were starting to dim. He had black hair, already half-fading to pepper-and-salt, and his cheeks were in dire need of a good shave. He wore strange clothes, sort of like a bathrobe but less fuzzy and more elegant, that she almost found pretty. That could almost be worn outside, probably, in some sort of oriental setting. He felt prickly to her senses, though, although she couldn't smell anything on him; he had a big blotch of red light on his chest, roughly the size of an apple, although she could see it less and less. She blinked again, twice.

"In the Ministry of Magic. You are here on account of breaching the Statute of Secrecy, causing us to have to Obliviate twenty-seven muddles—"

She blanked out for a second, pulling in a sharp breath. '_Not so muddle after all, are you?_' But she shook herself; the man was still talking, and if she was in a situation like last time, she needed to be _aware_, not losing herself to panic. She clenched her fists the tightest she could, the pinching sensation of her nails digging in her palms helping her focus despite the rising fear.

"—will be Obliviated as well once they get out of St Mungo's, of course, but their injuries were extensive enough that muddle healing would probably not have worked. All of this would have been passed as accidental magic, but you see, obscuri are another thing entirely."

"Magic? What, obscuri, I-I don't get what you're speaking of!"

"You. Hurt. People. Two of them. You risked the whole Wizarding community—"

"What bullshite, stop talking in code! Magic doesn't exist—" except it _did_, apparently. What else to call the freaky things she'd done to the hag? To the abandoned building? _Oh no, she'd hurt two more people_. Even when she tried, when she made things as safe as possible, she still hurt people.

"Of course it exists. But I'm going to guess that, like most Obscuri, you were muddle-raised and never exposed to it before. In fact, I'm ready to bet you did magic a couple time and were beaten up for it. At least, the statistics point out that that's the most common cause for the existence of people like you."

"I was raised in an orphanage. And will you explain to me what muddle means? What are the crows you mentioned earlier, and what is an Obscuri if I'm supposed to be one?"

"It's Mu_ggle_. Non-wizarding folk. You'll meet the Crows soon enough and you'll wish you hadn't. And Obscuri are magical children whose magic was repressed, turning them feral. Now, _you_ explain to me; we've been reading your magical footprint all over London lately;, so who were you looking for? What's _your_ type?"

"My type? Um, what?"

"Obscuri are created usually by one or two people abusing them, typically through physical violence. They in turn tend to look for such people and siphon them of their magic once they've turned. What was your type? We'll have to go over Muggle files to check for other victims."

"I don't have a _type_, I was running away from my family to protect them!" _Fey, Lucy, please be safe_.

"Hm. Strange." There was the sound of steps further down the hall. "Ah, there they are— Wait, _Dumbledore_? What are you doing here?"

"Auror Baldwin! I heard you'd found a child in London; then that the Crows were involved, and so I guessed the child was an Obscurial. A former student of mine, one Newt Scamander, recently managed to save one. You can imagine that, given my different functions, I'd try to help the child?" The voice was soft without being weak; it sounded like a voice from inside a book, a grandfather's voice perhaps, and when its owner stepped in front of the bars of the door, her hunch was confirmed.

It was a very tall man, and the impression of grandeur he naturally seemed to give off was accented by the fact that he held himself very straight. He had a long… long… _long_ beard, the end of which was tucked into the belt holding his outfit together. His hair was just as long, and his head was covered in a pointed hat with a large brim. His eyes, a startling ice blue, kept looking over his half-moon glasses at the man she'd been talking with.

Most of the lights were gone, but she could still see an enormous splotch of red on his chest, although it seemed to be fraying at the edges. She did not dare move but it quickly turned out that didn't need to, as the man crouched to be relatively level with her. This freed her line of vision and she saw several dark silhouettes behind him; she couldn't say how many.

"Good evening, child. My name is Albus Dumbledore, and I am here to help you. Would you give me your name?"

"Aren." It was barely a squeak but it would have to do.

"Aren then. Do you know what an Obscurial is?"

"The other man told me that it's a thing which happens when someone tries to keep the magic inside. I didn't know I had magic."

"You didn't know?" His eyes narrowed. "Tell me, Aren, when did the first weird accident happen?"

Aren had to count for a while. Judging by the number of hiding places and the time she usually spent at each of them…

"About… seventy days? Maybe a bit more."

Mr. Dumbledore turned his sharp eyes on the pepper-and-salt man. "Tell me, Auror Baldwin. Have you kept your knowledge of magical creatures and beings fresh? Can you, perhaps, remind me of the few key-points?"

"Well they're children repressed for showing signs of magic, usually in recurrence. They're often beaten into hating their own magic and the strain of stamping it out of themselves makes them turn feral."

"You're right. And what is the minimum time that has been methodically proven to be required for an Obscurial to, shall we say, mature? And by mature, I mean showing the first signs of loss of control."

"S-six months, Headmaster."

"I know you didn't take arithmancy, but how many days is that, Auror Baldwin?"

"Roughly… A hundred and eighty days, Headmaster."

"Therefore, is seventy days enough for a child to become an Obscurial?"

"N-no, Headmaster." He looked like he'd rather be anywhere but facing the old man.

"I therefore believe that Aren should be freed. _Immediately._" Aren had a ridiculous thought, then, of 'I supposed ice-blue is an apt description for eyes like that', before she registered what had just been said. Freed?

"Buh- What? No! She levelled an entire building in the middle of Muggle London! We can't let her out!"

The old man pinched his face in annoyance, the look so fleeting Aren could have imagined it, and it was immediately replaced by his genial grandfather expression from earlier.

"Let us, Aurore Baldwin, suppose you had a legitimate reason to arrest her. Have you even taken the time to properly interrogate her in a way that fits her age?"

"Y-"

"If you did, did you actually listen to her answers? She just said so: she didn't know she had magic. An Obscurial _cannot_ be born without the very central feeling of hating your own magic, which – let me repeat just once more to be sure – she didn't know he had." They were almost nose to nose now and seeing the younger (ish) man fidgeting and being generally _extremely_ uncomfortable would have been funny, she supposed, if it hadn't been her life hanging in the balance. (She just didn't know how literal that statement was.)

"How do you even know she is telling the truth?"

"Given that she accepts it, we could try Veritaserum of course. Or Legilimency. An Oath would also work. Would you ask that of a child, Aurore Baldwin?"

"Yes! If it–"

"_Stop_."

That brought Aren's attention was brought back to the people she had noticed earlier. They were five people of unidentified gender, cloaked in black, with a pattern of red lines going from their shoulders to the centre of their sternum and a crow-like mask. One of them had a beak lined in gold; that one talked then.

"That is enough. The evidence has been served." They turned to the rest of the group, "Murder, are you ready for the vote?"

It was only when they answered that Aren realised 'murder' was a way to address them.

"We are, Primary. The evidence has been served. All points to the child being feral but not an Obscurial. I vote against."

"I vote against."

"I vote against."

"I vote against."

The one with a golden 'beak' turned back to the Baldwin man.

"We vote against. You would have us kill an innocent, a _child_, to cover up your ignorance and save your dignity. We kill only the weak of heart, the lawless ones that seek only their own gain, and that child hasn't time to grow into anything, much less _that_. We refuse the kill."

They turned from Baldwin at once, pointedly ignoring him as they bowed to the old man with a single 'Dumbledore' in perfect synchronisation before leaving the way they had come in, the old man staring after them. Aren had, in total, barely seen then more than a minute but the encounter left her shaken to the core.

They had been called to kill her.


	3. Chapter 3

Mr. Dumbledore (now that someone had said his name again) stood back up, and Aren was convinced he was doing his best to stand at his straightest, to lord his height over Baldwin. Both men sharply stared at each other, with neither saying a word. Baldwin was shifting his weight from one foot to the other… finally, he apparently gave in and walked to the door to Aren's cell. He simply placed his hand flat on one of the bars, and she could see (barely, at this point) the lights shifting from yellowish orange to a soft green. There was a soft click and the door was slowly swinging open.

She was startled out of her reverie by Mr. Dumbledore, taking out a long stick that looked exceedingly similar to that of the hag in the backstreet. By sheer reflex, she made to jump back but could not stand up as a wave of the _thing_ surged out of her to slam into the old man. She closed her eyes, probably out of a subconscious decision to _not_ see the green swirls that surrounded her and then… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

At this point, it feels necessary to clarify : Aren had just spent an undetermined time unconscious on a cold, stone floor, right after being crushed to death (to some yet-to-ascertain degree) by a building, and she'd also been feeling the effects of her run from hideout to broken down building and of malnutrition. This left her sore, tired, bruised and she was somewhat certain that she had several sprains (a wrist and a knee, to be exact) that were thankfully not debilitating but could still be described as "fucking painful".

This sudden, distinct lack of anything, including the aforementioned pain, caused her to reopen her eyes in surprise after a handful of seconds, to look at her right arm. It had been the most bruised for sure, though not the most hurt; it was now back to 'full' health. There could be no mistake : whatever Bumbledore had done had only fixed pain that stemmed from wounds and accidents and had done nothing to fix the long-lasting deficiencies caused by the hunger, the over-exertion and the lack of sleep.

It took Aren's eyes going from Dumblebore's stick to her arm and back a couple times before the man caught on. He might've also noticed her slight panic. Since he did not know the _source_ of that panic, he unfortunately did not stow his stick away and kept waving it, as a side-effect of moving his hands as he spoke to try to calm her.

"√×∞÷±©$£& "

Were those words? They didn't feel like it. I n fact, it felt a lot like she had greasy cotton in her ears and her lungs, it was getting difficult to breathe. Dumbledrop obviously noticed, and finally hid the stick before kneeling again (couldn't be good for his knees), this time right in front of Aren. Baldwin chose the safest option and hastily backpedalled away from her.

With Dumbledore slightly closer and hiding other sources of stimuli from her, she could understand him a bit better, though it took a while for her to process the words.

"Young girl, there is nothing to fear. You are safe now. Can you hear me? Take deep breaths..."

The thing lashed out, making gashes and cracks in the stones of the walls and a cut somehow found its way on Dumbledude's face. It started seeping blood, and she panicked further. What if she did to him what she'd done to the hag? But no, she was still conscious of what was happening around her, she wasn't that far gone yet. She could still stop the thing.

Out of a desire to regain control, she stopped breathing altogether. The thing had stopped in response, and the power centred itself back on her, slowly crushing her.

"Shhhh. Do not be afraid. Here," the old man took one of her hand s, that laid limp at her side, and put it on her chest. He did the same with her other hand on his own chest, and proceeded to take measured breaths, "In , out. In, out. Can you feel my ribcage moving? Try to mimic it. In, out. In, out. The air comes into your chest and reaches all the corners of your lungs . Hold it in for a second then… Let it out. In, out. You'll be alright. Mr Baldwin will stay well away from you, and I will be escorting you from now on to make sure you remain safe. In, out. In… Out."

This kept going on for a while, how long she couldn't say, until the pressure in her chest eased off by small increments. Her head stopped spinning, and she slowly regained some degree of feeling in her limbs. Once he was sure that she was back in control of herself, he sat back on his heel, then rummaged in his bathrobe-like clothes until he brought out two things that looked like liquorice lollipops, immediately eating one and offering her the other — and after she mindlessly accepted one and started eating it (terrible idea), it actually tasted like liquorice.

She struggled a bit to get up, feeling pins and needles in her legs after sitting on them for too long . Having gotten up with a ease that belied his age, the old man tried to help her, but he stepped back when she reflexively recoiled, having caught on to her reaction. Gritting her teeth, she stomped the ground a couple time with each foot to get the blood pumping, hoping it would make the weird feeling go away faster.

The walk out of the building was anticlimactic as it could get. They spent a little time in the office of a very no-nonsense lady called Amelia Bones to finalise her release from the Ministry's custody. It was a lot of papers to read and sign, but at the end of this, her record was cleared of anything beyond the usual 'Accidental Magic' events that Dumbledore told her almost every wizarding children had. Her imprisonment having been a blatant mistake, it would be documented but not held against her.

A lot of the paper-filling also involved placing Aren in the custody of Mr Dumbledore; she would be his ward until she reached Wizarding majority, or her birth parents were found. Aren was wary of that last option; if her parents had left her at Spurgeon's, she wasn't sure she wanted to meet them at all.

After Dumbledore was done filling in the last papers, they left the building through what looked like a phone booth and ended up in a moderately frequented street. Aren couldn't help but think they had to be extremely conspicuous, an old man in what looked like an extremely fancy bathrobe and a street rat; but no one paid any attention to them.

They walked for a few streets, but Aren quickly found herself winded and a bit dizzy. It made sense, she suddenly realised; she didn't get to eat all that much in the first place, and she had just spent who knows how long on a stone floor without food or water. It seemed to occur to Dumbledore as well when he saw her stumble for the third time in as many minutes.

"Dear me, I suppose that was a miscalculation. You look exhausted, walking all the way to Diagon Alley is probably not an option is it?" She frowned a bit, unsure what to answer. "That is alright. I wanted to spare you the magical means of travel, as they're a bit jarring the first time and especially for children but… Follow me."

She did, into another couple of smaller streets, until no one could be seen around them anymore. Before she had time to panic – _oh no not again, old men and dark corners please not again_ – Dumbledore had kneeled in front of her again and spoke to her in a soft voice.

"Young girl? Aren? I better inform you beforehand: I brought you here so that we can travel out of muggle's sight. As Auror Baldwin no doubt impressed upon you, the statute of secrecy must absolutely be protected, so we cannot do magic in front of Muggles. Now, what we're going to do is called Apparating. A friend of mine, muggleborn, likened it to something called 'teleportation'. It is practical but not very discreet." He took a small break, letting Aren take it in. "It is also extremely unpleasant the first time you do it. It's a bit like being squeezed through a gardening hose from one end to the other."

Aren nodded, communicating her understanding, and the old man beamed at her like she'd announced both Christmas and Halloween had come early, at the same time. He extended his arm towards her, and she reflexively recoiled.

"Ah, apologies my dear. You will have to grab onto my hand for it to work, and please do not let go until I tell you to."

She did just that, and then with a loud crack… the sensation really was what her brain would've come up with if she'd tried to think of 'getting shoved through a garden hose'. It was also extremely disorienting; it took her a couple of seconds to be able to discern up from down. She blinked a couple time, only to see Dumbledore staring at her to assess if she was alright. After a nod of confirmation to him, she turned her sight to examine their new surroundings.

* * *

She just stared. And stared. It had been twenty minutes and she was still staring. It had only been interrupted a couple time by Dumbledore's chuckling, even as they had walked to the nearest pub to eat a simple meal. It was squeezed between shops selling things like _cauldrons_ and _frogs what even the heck?_

They were just finishing – with ice-cream! – when he started talking again.

"Quite the interesting place, isn't it? I grew up in wizarding society, and still I had that very same reaction the first time I came here. In the popular opinion, Diagon Alley is one of the most fascinating places of England, and possibly of Europe. I think that honour should be Hogwart's, but of course I'm a little biased." He winked at her. "Now, I must tell you of a few important facts."

"The first is, as you know, that I am now your legal guardian. That means that from now on, I will be responsible for you. It is not the same as Muggle adoption, as far as I know, but it will provide you with a place to fall back to, at least for now. It also means I will take care of all you day-to-day expenses in the foreseeable future."

She took that in, wordless, waiting for him to continue. A not-so-small part of her wondered if that meant he'd hold the expanses over her head like the Matron had done… or worse, Spurgeon's Intendent.

"Actually, I think I went about this in the wrong order. Introductions should be the first thing to happen, right? And ours happened in such dire circumstances that I think it would help a bit to start over." He cleared his throat. "I am Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I find that to be a bit of a mouthful, so you may call me Professor in public, and Albus in private like right now. Since I am your guardian, being called 'Professor' all the time might feel strange. I read in the file that your name was Aren, but that is all it said as the name was simply provided by scrying parchment. Can you tell me more?"

She shrugged with her left shoulder, not too sure she wanted to expound on her brilliant — definitely over as far as she was concerned — childhood. Dum- Albus obviously saw her discomfort with the idea and gently elaborated.

"I know, or at least I suspect, that you do not want to share what has happened to you until now. I imagine that living in the streets doesn't 'just happen' and that at least some of it was probably traumatic, but I also need to understand it as much as I can to care for you and to ensure that I do not cause a repeat of what happened in the cell before we left."

She winced, expecting berating at best and retribution at worst, but when she looked at him again, he was smiling and looked a tiny bit… sad? It dawned on her that he was blaming the incident, and the possibility of it happening again, on himself; she could only gape at him.

To make this easier on you, I thought you'd ask a question first, that I would answer, and then I will ask one that you will answer, so on and so forth. I realised that answers to the questions you have might not seem worth it, and they are not indeed vital — you could manage on your own with some time — but it will make things far easier for you. Do you agree?"

Aren pondered this for a while, taking several bites of her ice-cream to stall having to answer. She blurted the first thing she could think of.

"Why have we come here?" Well, that sealed the deal, she supposed.

"Aaaah, of course, we left rather hastily. Well, your magic is rather… demonstrative, let's say. It is not, however, inherently dangerous. I believe that if you are properly taught, your magic should come back under control fairly quickly." She nodded. "I do not know yet if your magic is simply precocious or more potent than the norm. Either way, I convinced Amelia to register you for school starting next week, provided that your preliminary testing in basic knowledge goes well. We are here to acquire what you will need for your schooling and basic needs for the year to come, and if anything misses, we will come back."

Aren definitely _really liked_ learning new things, and she was all for that plan. It did surprise her that he'd want to get her supplies before she even got tested; she hesitantly pointed it out to Albus.

"Oh, there are two reasons for that. The first is my inherent optimism, I see no reason to consider that you've failed before you've even _taken_ the test. The second is that even if you do not qualify, we can tutor you this year to catch up and your supplies will still be there next year to be used. Now, I believe it is my turn to ask a question?" She nodded again. "How long have you been living in the streets?" She hesitated. "I do not know yet if you were abandoned, ran away or grew up like this, which is why I am asking this."

She didn't want to answer, and suddenly the ice-cream didn't seem so tasty anymore. Albus was waiting patiently for her to answer, so he probably wouldn't let it drop…

"Roughly a year ago… I think? I was with other children. One of them... he wasn't breathing when I left. The other two were on another thing at the time. I don't know what happened to them. I left them… three weeks ago, I think." She hoped that was enough of an answer. "What subjects are taught at Hogwarts?"

Albus had a knowing glint in his eyes, but let it slide.

"During your first year, you will mostly be taught about core subjects: transfiguration, charms, history of the magical world, how to fly a broom (although that's only for the first year), potions, defence against the dark arts, herbology, and… ah, astronomy. Is there any of these subjects you want me to explain a bit more? That won't count as your question."

"Errr… Potions? And charms? All the others are pretty self-explanatory."

"Very well. Charms is generally the manipulations of the forces organising the world. The simplest example of that is the first spell you will learn, the levitating charm: it negates the effects of gravity, but only to the degree that you want it to. It also deals with creation and forced disappearance of objects such as water of fire, or the animation of objects. The intricacies are more complex than that, but you will not study them unless you take up arithmancy in third year.

"Potions is… are you familiar with chemistry?" Aren nodded, and Albus' eyebrows rose towards his hairline. "Hum, well, in practice, think of it as a medieval form of chemistry. The ingredients are much less pure but also much finer in application. It is a fairly dangerous subject, which is why our teacher in this topic is rather exacting on the students. It is also quite complex on the theory side, which makes it a subject very few students take to.

"My turn now, I think. Where did you live before you lived in the streets, and for how long?"

"I was in an orphanage in London for a bit more than a year. That was where I met the other children I was with in the streets." She looked up at Albus, who was expectantly looking at her. "They were… it was not too bad, at the beginning." She swallowed to try to get her throat less dry. "It was actually way better than the previous place I'd been to. Another orphanage. At this new place, the older kids looked after us at best, ignored us at worst. The matron was mean, and no one liked her, and she did tend to give us too many, too dangerous chores, and hitting us sometimes… but it was still better. But then about two months before we left, s-she started to get angry and drunk all the time. She'd hit us all the time, and she didn't give use food… she left Nichol in a closet for two days, without water or food, and she didn't let him out even to go to the bathroom. Nichol was very small, smaller than me. Phanes – she was on the streets with me after that – found him d-dead after three days. She said that if we were going to be starved, we might as well live on the streets because then at least we wouldn't get hit or abused or killed. So we followed her." She blinked, very fast, even though her eyes were surprisingly dry. "Can I ask a question now?"

"_May I_, and yes, you may."

"How does the school function?"

"Administratively? Scholarly? Socially?"

"All of that." Aren knew she was being greedy, and that if Albus agreed, she'd have to answer a big one next.

"Administratively speaking, it's fairly simple: you have me, the Headmaster; I am tasked with heavy sentences when a student steps out of bounds, such as suspension or expulsion; I take care of the public relations of the school, and of its funding; and finally, though it is less known, I am tasked with maintaining the wards of Hogwarts, that ensure safety within the school. Then you have Minerva McGonagall, the transfigurations teacher and the deputy headmistress. She's the one who takes care of recruitment for the first years, and deals with the organisation of detentions, as well as the coordination of the timetables and clubs. You have all the teachers, who can sometimes take care of extracurricular clubs. You will also meet Rubeus Hagrid, the Keeper of Keys and Grounds, but he just started as the Care of Magical Creatures professor this year. And finally, you have Argus Filch, the caretaker of the castle; he is mostly responsible for maintaining the castle's state of cleanliness… and he thinks finding students out of bed after curfew positively delightful, though said students rarely return the feeling.

"Scholarly speaking, first year and second year are as I described earlier. In third year, you get to choose between different electives, such as Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Arithmancy, Muggle Studies… you must take whatever class you choose until the end of fifth year, bar special circumstances. That's when you take your O.W.L's, or Ordinary Wizarding Levels. Depending on the results to these tests, and the expectation of your teachers, you can continue to pursue such and such subject, or you have to drop it. You then have your two last years of school, that lead to your N.E.W.T's, or Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests. The results of those determine which sort of further studies and career you can pursue, but that's for later, I think.

"Socially speaking, the school is divided into four houses. They group students of the same mind, try to foster their strength and discourage their weaknesses. The first house is Griffindor, which values boldness and courage and looks down on cowardice. The second is Hufflepuff, which values loyalty and friendship and abhors betrayal. The third is Slytherin, which values subtlety and cunning and discourages recklessness. And the fourth is Ravenclaw, which values knowledge and sharing it, and look down on lack of intellectual curiosity, or stagnation. They are led respectively by: Minerva McGonagall, the transfiguration professor; Pomona Sprout, the herbology professor; Severus Snape, the potion professor; and Filius Flitwick, the charms professor.

"Does that answer your question in a satisfying way?"

"I think so, yes. I might ask you to clarify things later… that won't count in my questions, right?"

"It will not," confirmed Albus. After a pause, he continued. "You said that being hit and starved and used as a house-elf- sorry, a slave, was better than the previous place. What was that place like?"

"Have you heard of Spurgeon's Orphanage in London?"

"Yes, we had a muggleborn student from there a couple years ago…" He let his words hang, obviously but gently urging Aren to continue. She lowered her eyes to her hands, joined in her lap, and her next words were a barely intelligible whisper.

"I was there from as early as I can remember, to then it closed when I was almost six and a half. That's when I moved to that other orphanage." Then she looked up.

Albus had paled so drastically that she actually felt worried he might have a heart attack or a similarly grave affection, then she understood. He knew. He knew. She had supposed she would have to tell him at some point, and now she didn't have to, but she wasn't sure if this was better or worse.

"What was the name of the superintendent?"

Aren had sometimes associated voices with colours, out of sheer instinct. Some had been red with anger, some had been green with fear, some had been purple and blue, with warmth. Some were white with the blinding perfection of lies; some were black, absolute, true. She'd never heard a transparent voice before. She flinched.

"... Joseph Matthews."

She was surprised when she escaped further questioning, as Albus let his face drop in his hands, his elbows propped up on the table. Both their ice creams were forgotten now. After a bit, he looked back up, and although he looked extremely tired, some colour was back in his face. Aren was surprised at the importance she gave to that. She also noticed that the cut on his face, while almost completely healed, had left a nasty scar. Magic looked potent but was apparently not omnipotent. She felt guilty about the scar.

"Aren," she flinched again. "... I won't ask more of you today; I think that is enough diving into things that are obviously painful to you, and I have enough to go off of for now, at least. Do you wish to finish your ice-cream?" She shook her head left and right. "Very well. Then I think it best that we start moving now."

He got up, and as soon as Aren followed suit, everything on the table vanished.

"We have to get your school supplies now. You have books, potion supplies and equipment, clothes both for school and casual, a wand, a pet, a suitcase with Wizarding space… That means space that is larger on the inside than on the outside. What do you want to start with?"

"The suitcase, I think? It will be more practical in the long run. Less things to lug around."

"That is not really a worry for Wizards, but you make a good point. Let's start there, then see what other shops there are nearby." His smile was small but seemed enthusiastic and sincere, and she followed him to their first destination.

* * *

She walked out of the clothes store completely blown off her own mind. The amount Albus had just spent on her was an aberration. She now had a few of everything in both normal- Muggle clothes, and Wizarding clothing. Cloaks, skirts, jeans, underwear… she had everything. Scarves and hoods, gloves… she would never be cold again.

She followed Albus in something called an "apothecary" where she simply stood as he got everything she would need that year, and once that was acquired and placed in her suitcase, they moved on to what looked like a bookstore.

When she passed the threshold, she felt like she'd gotten slapped in the face. So many books, everywhere, and this must be some more of what Albus called this 'Wizarding space' thing, because it definitely was larger inside than it had looked from the outside, and all of these were on thing she didn't know, without exception. She knew she could not get everything, but how could she choose?

Albus had kept moving, expertly going through the shelves and grabbing books this way and that, then going to the cashier and giving them to her but not paying them yet. He then walked back to her and leaned towards her without towering over her, which she was grateful for.

"I've already picked up all your schoolbooks, so you don't have to look for them. Now, since you'll probably be more interested in some subjects than others, I suggest you limit yourself to five books for now, then we will come back in two or three weeks, once you've gotten a feel for every subject. Does that seem ok to you?"

She realised that in that time she'd probably read only her schoolbooks, although she'd be done by the next outing. She said so to Albus, who acquiesced, and then went to pay the books and put them in her suitcase.

"Only two things left, Aren, and then we'll leave for the school for good. The wand, first." They entered an old store, where a man with wild white hair, wide eyes and wiry limbs welcomed them, smelling of dust and wood and closed spaces. It made Aren uncomfortable, but she quashed it as soon as the feeling reared its ugly head. She did not want to lose it here.

"Hello, young girl. Hmmm, young indeed, very young for Hogwarts, and yet Headmaster Dumbledore is here with you, so it must be that you are ready. Very well. Let us try… this first one. Birch, dragon heartstring, 11 inches, low flexibility." He handed the stick to Aren who felt distinctly uneasy. She swished it, and the old wand man's moustache caught on fire. He patted it down quickly, putting the fire out, but not before Aren had hurriedly put the thing back on his desk. "Well, I suppose that means not that one." He put it back in its box then pulled another one. "Yew, dragon heartstring, 13 inches and a half."

She swished this one too, this time away from any potential target. Nothing caught on fire this time; instead, one of the shelves exploded. She put it back down on the desk too while the wand man fixed the shelf.

"Not this one either."

This went on for quite a while. She had a very pronounced tendency to make things explode, or burn, or melt, and at some point, one of the wands exploded in her hand. "Oh, that was a terrible placement indeed. I am sorry. Please give me your arm, I will heal you right away."

The wand man waved his stick over her arm, first pulling the wood shards out of her skin, then slowly sealed the cuts. He then thought for a couple minutes, and in his silence, she wondered if she was a monster after all. Maybe monsters didn't need wands. Maybe they didn't need school, either. Just as she was starting to consider bolting through the door, the wand man snapped his finger and crowed a "I know!" Then he fled to the back room and came back with a single box.

"Young miss, I believe this one might be right. Yew wood, unicorn hair, thirteen inches, swishy and plenty flexible."

She waved that one with dread, but instead of yet another disaster as she expected, she felt a heat go up her arm, almost like the think living in her ribcage but more controlled and going the reverse way.

She let out her first true giggle in years. The wand man, Olivander she remembered, now that her anxiety wasn't gnawing at her insides, smiled at her and handed her the box the wand had been in.

"I think this is the one, young girl. Yew often chooses powerful wizards, be they light or dark, but unicorn hair is extremely resistant to dark magic. In addition, it tends to dampen the end result of spells, which considering your raw power is probably a good thing. The length and swishiness will make it great for transfiguration and potion work; in other words, precise crafts." He turned to Albus, "That will be seven galleons, please." And upon reception of the payment, "thank you. Young girl, I wish you good luck on your studdies," he added for Aren's benefit.

She returned the wand to its box, then placed the box securely within her trunk. No way in hell was she letting that one be damaged. She nodded to Albus, and they exited the store.

* * *

The last place they visited was the animal menagerie, upon Albus' insistence. The choice, emotionally speaking, had been an easy one.

A small cat, adolescent probably, but certainly not a full adult yet, had caught her eyes when she'd gotten close. It was black as night, a striking contrast to her own white hair, but its eyes were a piercing blue, closer her own indigo than to Albus' ice-like eyes. When Aren came closer to the cage's bars, which she judged an awful way to treat anything living, the cat started purring like it was trying to channel a see-saw; and when she scratched its head, the sound got even louder, loud enough that the owner came to see what was happening.

"Well that's a heckuva surprise. She's not mean to anyone, but she's usually cold as ice to all the clients _and_ to me." Albus went on to talk with the owner, and Aren kept petting the cat. She knew, strategically speaking, that an owl would be more helpful, especially with mail, as Albus had explained to her during their shopping; but the cat was now softly batting at her finger, and she couldn't detach herself from it.

Albus came back to her, startling her out of her reverie.

"I've discussed with the clerk, and I got her for you. She doesn't have a name, as it is traditional to name an animal after they come into their owner's care. As for mail, well… provided that Fumseck, my familiar, is amenable, you can borrow him to send whatever correspondence you might want."

Aren gaped at him, then at the cat — her cat — then back at Albus, and then the cat, and back and forth for a few seconds. She could not answer Albus, nor say thank you, as the words stayed stuck in her emotion-clogged throat. She just got the cat out of her cage, gathered her in her arms, and put her face in her slick fur. The purring picked up again, louder.

"I'm going to call you Duister."


	4. Chapter 4

Okay, so, first thing: magical means of transportation were _nasty_. And that was Aren's opinion _after_ the terrible sneezing (caused by that 'flew powder' thing) had stopped, meaning some twenty minutes later when the knee-jerk reaction of 'never enough' had passed. The nausea was much more persistent.

Still, it remained overall much less painful than Apparition had been. No squeezing, no suffocation, and she didn't have to touch anyone to do it. So many perks!

(She'd been waiting for about twenty minutes, and the boredom was making her sarcastic.)

They'd landed in what appeared to be a cosy antechamber of sorts, or what she'd seen described as 'salon' in a few books. There was a small couch against one of the walls, directly facing the fireplace they'd arrived through. In front of the couch was a low table with a weird contraption sending up drops of water that inevitably landed back in the very spot in came from.

(It was weird.)

On both sides of the low table were two chairs, placed so that they were flanking the couch Aren was sitting on at the moment. On the wall to her right, a door was open, leading to wherever Dumble- Albus had gone to. That had been the first thing he'd told Aren when they'd arrived:

"Can you sit here for a bit, Aren? I need to sort your testing, as well as call the heads of house to sort out what we're going to do; regardless of what we choose to do, we'll need their input since you'll be living in the castle from now on even if you don't get to start school immediately."

He'd snapped his fingers, and a very small creature that barely reached his knee had appeared. It looked about as thin as she was, scrawny legs and arms and knobby joints, with an oversized head that was at least the width of its bony shoulder. Its nose pointed prominently from its face, narrow and sharp, slightly upturned. It had rather large ears, that one could have likened to an elephant's at a smaller scale. One of them was slightly droopy. When it looked briefly at her upon arrival, she saw it had eyes so large it was probably the size of her fist. It turned back immediately to Albus, letting her observe his strange outfit made of what looked to be a clean dish towel tied around its hips.

"Yes, Mister Headmaster, sir?" He asked, the eagerness obvious in its voice.

"Callie, can you please bring something for Aren here to drink? A fruit juice, probably, to give her some nutrient but not upset her stomach. She hasn't had any food in a while."

"Yes, Mister Headmaster." And… Callie? Disappeared again. Albus turned back to Aren.

"This was Callie, a Hogwarts house elf. I doubt you'll have the same prejudice as most wizard-raised children, but just in case: she is just as sentient and intelligent as you and I, so I do not want you to treat her in any way you wouldn't want to be treated.

"Before I go, I want to clarify something before the heads of house arrive. As your guardian, you can _always_ come to me whenever you need. I might tell you to wait for a bit if I'm occupied, but it is my role – and I chose that role – to be here and help you in whatever capacity I can; and if I cannot do something, it is my role to _find_ the resources that might help you in my stead.

"This does not mean you get a pass for whatever strikes your fancy. I do have a certain neutrality to maintain as the Headmaster, so if you come to me as a student, I will have to be more removed from the situation. Regardless, if you misbehave or put yourself in danger, you will be punished," Aren had abruptly paled but hadn't had get the time to panic, "_but_ these punishments will never be physical or degrading in anyway. I will make them as boring or annoying as possible so that you will not want to have a repeat, but my primary concern is your continued safety and wellbeing. Is that clear?"

Aren had warily nodded her assent, not sure she could actually trust that statement; she'd see how it went but she hadn't ruled out running away yet.

"Oh, and don't hesitate to ask questions, of course," Albus had added before leaving the room. She hadn't had the time to ask if their little 'one question each' thing was still ongoing.

* * *

It was only her principle of not wasting food that kept her from spitting out the… juice… Callie had gotten her.

"Um, Callie?"

"Yes Miss Aren?" The elf looked about as wary as Aren felt herself.

"What is this?"

"Pumpkin juice, Miss Aren. Does it not suit your taste?" In what looked like a nervous tic, she tugged on her droopy ear. "Should I get something else?"

"No, no! Don't worry. I've just… never had pumpkin juice. I didn't know it existed." She started sipping at it again, and now that she knew what to expect, it was rather nice, and it was thick enough to make her feel nicely full without feeling like she had a brick in her stomach.

"You've never had pumpkin juice, Miss?"

"Mmh mmh. Never. No pumkin either. Or anything made _with_ pumpkin."

It took her a moment to read the expression on the little person's face. It looked a little pinched. Was she annoyed?

"Disgrace. Adults should have made you try it. Pumpkin is good for little wixlings."

"Wixlings?"

"The children that have magic. Small witches and wizards. Pumpkin isn't magical but it has the right balance of nutrient for your core. That's why Hogwarts offers it during meals."

"Ah, that's why," Aren nodded. "I wasn't in a… Wixling family? Is that how I should say it?"

"Wixes. They are humans who have magic. So, the young Miss has nev–" She was interrupted by the fireplace roaring to life and briefly lighting the room in harsh greens.

A very, very small man, although slightly taller than Callie (Aren estimated him to reach Albus' hip) came in through the fire. Unlike Callie, he was dressed in those robe things, though in a much milder palette of colour than Albus' were. He had white, curly short hair and a short beard over his chin, a pointy nose and pointy ears, and a pair of old spectacles sat on his face, clipped to his nose.

"Oh, hello child. I take it you're the young girl Albus wants to talk about? Nice to meet you, I am Filius Flitwick."

Lulled by the warmth and the full stomach, the surreal feeling the day had been _dripping with_, and the fact that he was barely taller than herself, Aren didn't think to stop what came out of her mouth.

"Are you a house-elf too?"

He blinked a couple times before answering in a cheerful manner, "Well _that_ is a question no one's ever asked me. Hah, don't worry, child," he added when he saw her discomfited expression, "confusion is bound to happen. It's your first time in Wizarding society, right?"

"Yes sir. I didn't know other people could do… that." After a second of thinking, she added, "or that human didn't have the monopole on, you know. Society, I guess."

"A fair assumption for a child raised out of Wizarding society. You will have time to learn, so long as you keep an open mind. To answer your earlier question, I am Filius Flitwick, head of Ravenclaw and professor of Charms and Sortilege."

"Oh, yeah. Dum- Albus gave me a quick rundown. The house that like books and learning and investigating right?"

"It is a bit more than that, but you have the big lines down, yes."

The door to the right fully opened, and out came Albus with what looked like a rag in his hand.

"Filius, you've already arrived! Perfect, perfect. Let me…" He waved his wand, Aren flinching a little, and two more chairs appeared around the low table. "Callie, can you please get us some tea for six people? The other head of house should be coming shortly; I trust that you remember their preferences. For Aren, camomile would be for the best I think." She bowed. "Thank you very much.

"Flitwick, if you would please take a seat?" He sat himself in the couch, at Aren's side, just as the fireplace flared to life again and three people came out of it in rapid succession.

A plump woman with greying hair and a worried, caring face, walked out of the hearth. A tall, stern woman all in green was the next person, and Aren immediately pegged her as the strict grandmother type that she'd read about in several books. She didn't know yet if it was advantageous or not. The last person to step out was a very tall man — taller than Albus even — all in black, even his hair and eyes; he was lean but not in the same underweight way that she was, and carried himself in a towering way over everyone in the room. He had a long nose, with a visible bridge right in the middle that indicated it'd been broken at some point; his face was stuck in a sneer. He was the first to speak, although he mostly ignored Aren in favour of Albus.

"Headmaster. May I suggest we get on with this business as soon as possible? I'd like to be done with grading the fifth year's summer papers before the end of the day, and you interrupted me in the middle of the Weasley pair's. You know what I think of these morons' papers."

"There, there, Severus. It shouldn't take too long. You're already all aware of the situation, so let us keep it short. Aren," he turns to her, "I have set up your testing to take place in the next two days, so that you have your Sunday for a break. Depending on your results, either your tutoring will start as soon as we have tutors – I expect it to take about two to three days – or you join classes on Monday. The fact that you need to catch up on the first two weeks of classes will be taken into account, of course, although it means a lot of work on your part for the first month or so.

"The remaining question is this: do you wish to be sorted now, or when you start classes for good, either on Sunday or next year?"

She took the time to think out her answer – no matter the fact that the tall man, that she though was Severe Snake or something, was glaring at her probably to make her hurry the hell up. Assuming she failed the testing, getting sorted the next year would give her time to know the houses; but as she didn't exactly have a choice, it didn't really matter, and the only 'advantage' she'd have would be getting sorted at the same time as everyone else. On the other hand, if she passed the test she'd have to be sorted at the latest on Sunday.

"I think… now would be good. Worst case scenario, I get more time to get to know my house."

"Very good. Now," Albus took the rag he'd been holding earlier and shook it out. "This is the Sorting Hat; we use it to determine where you would fit most. I will put it on your head, and you will have a silent conversation with it. Is that fine with you?" She nodded again. "Perfect."

He placed the hat on her head softly, and suddenly she felt it move slightly before it slipped over her eyes.

"_Aaaaah, young one, you're a bit late, aren't you?_" Alba yelped out loud. "_Do not fret, child. I am only here to see where you would fit best. Hmmm… You are loyal. You fight for those you hold dear, quite literally to the death. This suggests both Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, but you are extremely wary of anyone else, so Hufflepuff would maybe not be the best place; you would also be smothered and coddled, and you would not like that, I think._"

"_No. No that would not work for me. What about Gryffindor?_"

"_You are brave, that I do not doubt. But your bravery is too strategic, too considered and thought out. They would call you a coward and shun you._"

"_Oh… that does not seem like a nice place to be._"

"_It fits others, but not you. Your love of knowledge, your ability to teach yourself, your extensive reading list would make you fit for Ravenclaw, but you are survival oriented. With all your verbal crudeness, you are cunning and intelligent, and I think the best fit for you would be…_ SLYTHERIN!"

There was a prolonged silence, during which she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then Albus shook himself, stood up, and picked the hat up from Aren's head.

"Well, there you are. Minerva, Filius, Pomona, that will be all for now I believe. We'll see you tomorrow for the testing?"

"Of course, Albus," that was the tall grandma woman. "See you tomorrow, Miss Dumbledore," she added with a slight bow.

Aren turned to Albus. "Miss Dumbledore?" Albus chuckled lightly.

"Ah, yes. Officially, as my ward, you are Aren Dumbledore. You'd have kept your last name if you'd had one, but as an orphan your legal name was Aren Spurgeon, and I thought you might not want to keep _that_ as a name."

She shuddered. "Yeah, hell no." After a hesitation, "Thank you, Albus."

At that point, the plump woman (Sprout?) who had been listening on the side with a hand holding her own cheek started speaking.

"Oh sweetheart, you're going to love it here. If you have any question, do not hesitate to come see me, alright?" And then she followed that with a smothering hug, and Aren's reflexes kicked in. She kneed the woman in the thigh, brutally, and when she yelped in pain, she took the chance to escape her grasp. She jumped off the couch to immediately go hiding behind it, in the little space left by the incline of the back against the wall.

Stunned both by Aren's reaction and the dull throbbing in her thigh, the Sprout woman toon a moment to react, and this left enough time for panic to take proper roots in Aren's head. _Don't touch me don't hold me gotta escape restriction bad bad bad._ She dully registered that she was starting to hyperventilate again.

"Oh no, oh no, I'm sorry dear, I didn't mean to startle you… please, I won't hurt you." The rapid breathing didn't stop. "Oh no, sweetheart, no, no, you're safe, look," she took several steps back to give space to the girl, just as Albus was kneeling down in front of Aren's little hiding nook. Filius was standing on his chair, trying to see behind the couch, the tall grandma lady was half already in the fireplace but stepped back out, and the man in black was half raised from his seat, wand in hand, looking both shocked and annoyed.

Aren was sitting curled in a ball, her arms tied around her legs, breathing very fast in shallow puffs of air. Her eyes were wide and unseeing. He could almost see the magic around her, and there was a web of little cracks on the ground around her.

"Aren? My girl, it's alright, you're safe. Remember that little exercise we did in the cell? I'm going to take your hands now, and do that same thing, alright?" He was talking very slowly and in a low, soft voice. He very slowly extended his arms towards her, and a surge of magic lashed at his face again, this time narrowly missing his left eye. He didn't even flinch. He managed to catch her hands and placed them as he'd done just that morning: one on her own chest, one on his.

"There. You feel it? In, out… In, out… In, out… There, slowly." The murmuring kept going on for a while, and then the tension of magic in the room slowly ebbed away. "There. Can you come out? There, there. Let's go back to the couch. You're safe."

Aren looked up from her spot slowly, then crawled out of her hiding spot after Albus had scooted back a bit. She stood in the corner against the couch, shoulders hunched and head bowed. Her left hand kept aggressively scratching her right arm.

"... Sorry." She looked up at Pomona, and her face switched from unease to bafflement. "Why are you crying?"

Pomona had a twitch in Aren's direction, but held herself back, still crying. "I scared you. I'm so sorry sweetheart, I didn't mean to. I only meant to welcome you, I promise. I'll be careful from now on."

"Why would you cry for that? You didn't get hurt… Oh. I'm sorry for your leg."

Pomona shook her head. "That's alright, sweetheart. I'm glad your first reflex is to protect yourself. The fault lies entirely with me." She let a moment pass. "Can I come back closer?"

Aren did not understand that she'd even ask. She nodded, and let the homely woman wipe her cheeks of their tears; Aren hadn't even realised they were there. The tall, strict lady was dabbing at Albus' left brow bone with a piece of clean fabric she had summoned. She realised she'd hurt Albus again, and guilt gnawed at her gut, but Albus just… winked at her?

"Alright, I think that's enough excitement for now. Now that Aren's house, I suggest we all take off and go back to what we were doing; Severus, if that's alright with you, I think we should wait for Sunday and the test results to see if we should introduce Aren to the rest of the house, but there _are_ a couple of things I wish to discuss with you in Aren's presence this evening after dinner."

The man nodded, before giving them a flat 'good evening' and leaving the room. The tall lady followed suit, though in a warmer fashion; and Sprout gave her a little hand-wave before leaving as well, but not before Albus told her "Pomona, not to patronize you but please go see Poppy for your leg before it turns into deep bruising please," and she'd agreed, adding that she'd had something to get for her 'firsties' there anyway.

* * *

Albus had opened up the guest room in his quarters for Aren, and she took a much needed nap; she didn't know what time she'd gone to sleep, but it was about 8pm when she woke up and went to find Albus, who immediately got her to eat some, with a serious but gentle 'you have some catching up to do in the food department, child'. Apparently, he'd already eaten in what he called the 'great hall', and the elves could now get her some of the leftovers. Aren thought magic was brilliant if it could keep food warm and unspoiled for an extended length of time.

Duister had spent most of her nap with her – to her knowledge – and even now she was following Aren everywhere: weaving around her ankles as she exited the room, batting at her pants as she stood listening to Albus, purring at her feet as she ate her dinner until she leapt into her lap to snuggle up and _purr louder_.

(Aren snuck her a couple of beef ragout pieces. Ster looked just about as skinny as she did herself.)

Albus had left her alone to eat for some time, and only came back as she was finishing her plate.

"Aren, Severus is here; are you done eating?"

"Yeah- yes."

"Give your plates to Callie then, and join us in the salon please." She did, thanking Callie as she went and earning a very strange expression of gratitude. She'd have to figure that out later; she followed Albus into the salon.

Albus was sitting on the couch, in the same spot he'd been earlier; Severus was in one of the two original chairs, to the left of the couch, the two additional chairs that Albus had summoned earlier having vanished.

"So, Severus. Aren here, as you gathered earlier, did not grow up in the… best conditions. As it is, I think it best that you hear me out before telling her of your infamous 'Slytherin rules'; she also will need a trip to the infirmary as early as possible tomorrow, as I suppose she is already quite drained and will be even more so at the end of our discussion." He turned to Aren with a small smile. "Aren, I am sorry to have to speak of you as if you were not here, and some of what I will say will be brutally honest, but I think it best to give as much relevant information to Professor Snape, that he might ensure your safety in the Slytherin house, and the school in general, to the best of his abilities. Will that be acceptable to you?"

"I… suppose it's alright. Just. Teachers are okay, and the nurse too if you have one, but please don't ever say anything to my classmates. I.. If anyone must tell them of anything, I want it to be me."

"That seems quite reasonable. Very well." He turned to Professor Snape. "Aren is an orphan. She was raised in an orphanage called Spurgeon's Orphanage, London. I am sure you remember Marin Abbercrombie? Aren apparently spent the first six years of her life there before it was closed, because of the actions of one Joseph Matthews."

"_Spurgeon's_?"

She'd never seen such a white face on someone alive. It was even more brutal than what she'd seen earlier that day at the place she'd eaten her lunch at with Albus. His voice was a red so dark it was almost dark, and Aren wondered if it was because of the superintendent or because he was angry at having to deal with her. Albus continued, undisturbed in appearance only.

"She then was transferred to another orphanage of which the name she didn't tell me, where she was hit and starved on a regular basis and stayed there for roughly six months. She then fled from there from three other children and lived with them for almost a year until the Ministry caught her yesterday evening, for levelling a block in London in the late afternoon. She has been physically abused at the very least, and has suffered from quite a bit of neglect. She is now my charge, and when she joins the Hogwarts cursus, she will need a tutor on top of her normal classes to learn to control her magical reserves. Does this make sense thus far?"

"Yes. I will set up the tutoring in question after we visit Madam Pomfrey tomorrow, since it is independent from whether she joins first year or not. Considering her Magical levels, should we find her separate quarters or put her with the other students?"

"I think until Sunday, that is a moot point. Depending on the results, she'll either stay here with me if she is tutored this year, or join the dorm on Monday evening. In the meantime, I ask you to warn her housemates of her arrival, that they don't take her for an intruder. I will tell Minerva to warn her students that there is a new Slytherin so that they might not be too hostile when they meet her."

"Very well. You realise that no amount of warning the Gryffindor will keep them from being hostile with her? Nor anyone from the other houses."

"One can hope, but I want them to be warned for another reason: the students will know that we are aware and watching out, and will stay put for a bit longer if we do that. I also encourage you to have a discussion, however. It might make things easier." He finally turned to Aren. "Well, my child, I think all we be as well as can be. Now remember what I told you earlier: if you ever need my help, or just want to talk, do not hesitate to come to me of course, but know that Professor Snape also has a role of counsellor and that if you feel there is something you'd rather talk to him about, it doesn't have to be me. It comes down to which you feel most comfortable talking to, depending on the topic. Alright?"

"Alright," acquiesced Aren. Professor Snape got up, and Aren mirrored the movement.

"Welcome to Slytherin, Miss Dumbledore. You will hear words of Slytherin benefiting from heavy favouritism, from me. Know that while I favour my snakes outside of the house quarters, you should not expect unfair indulgence. I will not punish you in front of your peers, just as I do not assign punishment to other snakes out of their _den_," he sneered at the word, "but there is always retribution. That being said, I will go over the rules with you on Sunday, regardless of your test results. You'll be a Slytherin starting then either way, and I expect you to conduct yourself as such."

The red was gone out of his voice, and it was back to a neutral black. She always preferred that tone; it wasn't very warm, but she knew it was the truth, and it didn't hold any aggression.

He waited until she nodded her understanding, another sneer falling over his face for a brief second, before he bowed to the headmaster and left the room through the fireplace.

She wished Albus a good night after making sure he didn't need her for anything else, then left the salon and went up the winding stairs to the guest bedroom. She'd just slept quite a bit and didn't feel tired yet, so she leant towards her suitcase, that was somehow just sitting by the side of her bed, and dug out a book at random.

"_Magical Theory_, by Adalbert Waffling. Sounds like a good place to start, don't you think?" She asked Duister. The cat let out a little '_mrrruip_', waited until Aren had herself settled in bed, her pillows propping her up against the headboard and her comforter over her legs, then settled about roughly where Aren's thighs were to nap as Aren started reading her book.

_Chapter one: The magical core…_


End file.
